This past weekend marked the two month mark for our build. Getting the siding about 2/3 installed felt symbolic – at the end of the weekend we could step back and really see for the first time how everything is coming together, but it’s also impossible to ignore how far we still have to go.
Two months in we’ve accomplished a ton – we’ll hopefully wrap up most of the exterior this week, and the interior doesn’t need all that much more attention before we can close up the walls. But you always go into a project like this thinking it will move faster, even when you’ve already experienced the truth of that adage about projects taking twice as long as planned. (Thankfully it doesn’t look like the other half about projects costing twice as much is going to catch up with us this time!)
We are lucky enough to both be self-employed and able to take time off to focus on this build, fitting work and other necessary life things around the edges of building and keeping an aggressive schedule. But it’s easy to get lost in the hustle of a project at this pace. As we’re heading into summer we’re learning to split out tasks better, work in the cooler parts of the day, enjoy the garden that’s growing up around us as we build, and take downtime both for ourselves and for the project, to make sure the lure of getting it done doesn’t trump doing it well. Done is definitely better than perfect, but it’s worth taking a beat to get things right, especially when you’ll be living with them for a long time to come.
– Liz
